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“Noé,” I say in a low voice as I squeeze Rina’s hand again before I let it go, trusting him to protect her while I . . . what? Do the unthinkable? Damn Kharon and his meddling to the Abyss.
In the middle of the Great Hall, Gray and I meet, separated by only a few feet. “Luka,” he says simply before pulling his dagger from its sheath. Only by sheer force of will do I not flinch. We don’t carry our swords in the Great Hall – ever – so I’m unarmed. My mind starts mapping out how this will go if he starts a brawl right here, right now. Though it’s more likely that I’ll have to challenge him formally and –
“If it came down to it,” Gray starts and I dare take my attention off the dagger for a second. “I didn’t want you to have to fight Eldon to re-gain the title. I’m hoping you’ll accept my surrender.” He flips the dagger around to present it to me hilt first.
A collective gasp goes up and echoes off the walls, including my own. A warrior never surrenders.
He goes on with, “A man must be able to think for himself in a crisis, to do the right thing when it’s called for, so that’s what I’m doing now. The right thing. You, Luka, are the deve we need.”
Mother help us both, but he’s also trusting inmeto do the right thing in return. Everything I was ever brought up to believe is screaming at me to end his life. He’s a threat now. He’ll be a threat tomorrow. He’ll be a threat to my leadership for the remainder of his days if I let this stand. If I let him live.
I accept the blade . . . and offer it back to him. “I accept your surrender Grayson Cyrun.”
Another dramatic gasp, but this one is followed by excited chatter that quickly turns into cheers.
Unheard of emotion shines back at me from Gray as he accepts the knife and I pull him into an embrace that includes a solid pounding on the back. It takes a second, but he responds by doing the same.
The cheering suddenly takes on a horrified edge. We spring apart in time to watch Zola land flat on her back on the unforgiving stone floor not far from us.
“Mother!” Gray yells, shoving people aside as they crowd around her. Holy shit. The first thing that registers is the blade embedded in the middle of her chest. The second, the knife in her now slack hand.
Rina slams into my side. “She almost got you. She almost got you,” she chants over and over.Got me?Noé blocks my view of Zola, putting himself between me and Gray. Eldon joins him.
“What happened?” I demand, stroking Rina’s hair to reassure her I’m fine.
Over his shoulder, Noé says, “She came at you. I stopped her.” Our eyes meet and I give him a nod for solving one of the longest-running problems of my reign – what to do with Zola Cyrun. He could have stopped her without killing her, but now, it is done. And I’m relieved.
Gray, however . . .
He stands and exhales heavily, his hands on his hips, his chin tipped up to the ceiling. “Damnation!” he roars with frustration. “Why couldn’t you just stop?!”
He’s talking to his mother.
“Why couldn’t you just let it go?!”
Of course there’s no answer. The woman is dead.
The chatter around us picks up again, and while some gather around Zola in shock and dismay, many begin to approach Rina and me under Eldon’s and Noé’s watchful eyes. “My deve, my a’deve,” is repeated over and over again as heads are willingly inclined to reaffirm their loyalty.
“Are you out of your minds?!” comes from the front of the room. Apparently Kharon is offended by the turn of events. “This is not our way! This is not accep –”
“Shut up,” I yell, drowning him out. “You will pack up and leave immediately. You are no longer welcome in the Mountain Lion Realm.”
Pulling Rina closer and kissing her forehead, I watch a sputtering Kharon be corralled from the room by my warriors. There will be consequences for this, I’m sure, but sometimes the hard choices are the only choices.
That is leadership. Something I plan to enjoy with my wife by my side for many years.
Epilogue
Rina
The heat has been intense this summer, but I can’t complain since I’ve never quite gotten used to how cold it gets during the winter here in the north.
“Papa, watch!” yells our five-year-old son, Talon, from up ahead where he’s about to jump down from a fallen log at the edge of the meadow. After being cooped up in the stronghold all day to avoid the heat, he has a lot of energy to burn off this evening, something that has brought on this impromptu family walk.
Luka, not wanting to wake our six-month-old daughter, Kayla, who sleeps on his broad shoulder, waves him on, indicating he’s watching as our little man has asked. Fatherhood looks so good on Luka. As any parent knows, children are not easy to deal with, and though I knew Luka would take the task seriously, I never imagined how patient and loving he would prove to be with our children. I think he wants to provide them with everything that was missing from his childhood and it melts my heart on a very regular basis.
Things have not always been easy for us though. While Talon is a hearty child, who’s rarely sick, our second son, born two years later, was not. We lost him to a fever not long after he was born and with him went a very big piece of ourselves. For the longest time, I couldn’t bring myself to even glance at the wall of skulls in the Great Hall. I had no idea that Luka bowed his head in prayer over our baby’s remains every day until I came upon him one day by accident doing just that. A few weeks later, I began joining him. Though the grief will never completely leave me, the prayers have helped me greatly.
